English Music Quotes

#1. I grew up listening to English music.

Ryan Tedder

#2. Frieda, you despise English music. You know you do. And English art. And English literature, except Shakespeare, and he's a German.

E. M. Forster

#3. English music is white - it evades everything.

Edward Elgar

#4. There was always a lot of American music in England until, obviously when the Beatles came around, then there was a shift towards English music, but before then American music was the main thing.

John Deacon

#5. Mexican music runs through my veins. I loved it. Growing up, my father didn't allow us to listen to English music at home. That's all I heard. I had no choice.

Jenni Rivera

#6. People say my music is English. I don't know what it is. Maybe it's not me writing English music, but that English music is becoming more like me.

Harrison Birtwistle

#7. I have always believed that the material world is governed by nonmaterial sources, so that in that sense 'English Music' is an exercise in the spiritual as well as the material. I have always been attracted to the Gothic and spiritual imagination, and I've always been interested in visionaries.

Peter Ackroyd

#8. There is one thing on earth more terrible than English music, and that is English painting.

Heinrich Heine

#9. The people have no ear, either for rhythm or music, and their unnatural passion for pianoforte playing and singing is thus all the more repulsive. There is nothing on earth more terrible than English music, except English painting.

Heinrich Heine

#10. I am one of the best five writers to come out of English music since the war.

Roger Waters

#11. Growing up, I never listened to English music. I was more into Motown, as well as early rock n' roll like Chuck Berry and Little Richard.

Alex Winston

#12. No one, not even Shakespeare, surpasses Milton in his command of the sound, the music, the weight and taste and texture of English words.

Philip Pullman

#13. I do notice that I spend a lot of all my time steeped in different forms of myth, such as English folk music, for example, not really studying it necessarily, but just trying to experience it so I can recall it later.

Jez Butterworth

#14. That's totally their interpreter," a girl with a lip ring informs us. "Even though they totally record their music in English, they totally speak in Inuktitut. Totally.

Libba Bray

#15. We lived on a farm in the English countryside, where we wrote a lot of our music. You really were treated like an artist during those days-not like product, which is now the mode.

Gary Wright

#16. Until House came along I don't think the English made very good dance records, you know, there were very few really good English Rap records, whereas once House came along all of a sudden we started and now I think we probably lead the world, and have overtaken America in dance music.

Fatboy Slim

#17. There's a great tradition among the English of writing about Berlin. It's kind of a state of mind, almost. That even translates in terms of music. A lot of people go to Berlin with the idea that it's a state of mind.

Philip Kerr

#18. It's an often-asked question, 'Why did all these spotty white English boys suddenly start playing blues in the '60s?' It was recognized as this kind of vibrant music and when I first started playing in a blues band I just wanted to bring it to a wider public who hadn't really heard it.

Steve Winwood

#19. I met people that I couldn't talk to - they didn't speak Spanish or English - but they knew my songs. That's what I love, the music has gone past where I thought it would get to. That's the power of music, how it can travel and break language barriers.

Prince Royce

#20. When I hear the word 'independent' I reach for my revolver. At this point, what the hell does that mean? The English Patient is an independent film. Hootie and the Blowfish are alternative music. I'm the Queen of Denmark. I don't know what it means anymore.

Jim Jarmusch

#21. For you, it's a silent movie. For us, it's a talking movie because we had lines on set. There's a lot of noise on set and music. We spoke in English, in French, in gibberish, but it was very alive. The challenge was tap dancing.

Jean Dujardin

#22. Farsi Couplet:
Naala-e zanjeer-e Majnun arghanoon-e aashiqanast
Zauq-e aan andaza-e gosh-e ulul-albaab neest


English Translation:
The creaking of the chain of Majnun is the orchestra of the lovers,
To appreciate its music is quite beyond the ears of the wise.

Amir Khusrau

#23. In 1965, when great young white artists in the English-speaking world were successfully re-channeling hillbilly and black music - you know Bob Dylan, Ray Davies, Pete Townsend, Keith Richards - they didn't get any money at first. They were all broke.

Iggy Pop

#24. Country music ... doesn't bend notes in the same way, so I suppose it's very English, really. Even though it's been very Americanized, it feels very close to me, to my roots, so to speak.

Mick Jagger

#25. I spoke English at school and Spanish at home, and I'm always eating Dominican food, listening to Dominican music.

Prince Royce

#26. Always when I write my music, I take my guitar, and I improvise always with a melody, you know, lyrics in Spanish. But sometimes I use some words in English. I don't know why. Maybe because I listen to a lot of music in English.

Juanes

#27. An unalterable and unquestioned law of the musical world required that the German text of French operas sung by Swedish artists should be translated into Italian for the clearer understanding of English-speaking audiences.

Edith Wharton

#28. That mainstream English is essential to our self-preservation is indisputable ... but it is not necessary to abandon Spoken Soul to master Standard English, any more than it is necessary to abandon English to learn French or to deprecate jazz to appreciate classical music.

John R. Rickford

#29. How will the Tower of Babel be undone? How will we understand each other in Heaven? Will we all speak English or Dutch or Latin? No, we will speak music.

Peter Kreeft

#30. Philippe also brought along musicians - mainly trumpeters and drummers - to scare the enemy. Even then, French music was known to terrify the English.

Stephen Clarke

#31. If his Russian was music, his English was murder.

Vladimir Nabokov

#32. Dreams do come true, even for someone who couldn't speak English and never had a music lesson or much of an education.

Lawrence Welk

#33. Ironically, for a few million people in the Far East, I did become an English teacher through my music.

Pat Boone

#34. Realistically, English is a universal language; it's the number one language for music and for communicating with the rest of the world.

Enrique Iglesias

#35. I'm English and I am British. I don't know if I feel part of a music scene. Musically, I have as many feelings and affinity with Americans or Canadians, or all sorts of people as I do with English people.

David Gilmour

#36. Hymn tunes are the nearest we've got to English folk music..

John Betjeman

#37. What I like about Sapphics is the music of a non-iambic metric in English.

Marilyn Hacker

#38. I was never particularly academic, so it was no great surprise when I failed my 11-plus and consequently went to Wibsey Secondary Modern. I did all right in English, history and music, which were the subjects that most interested me.

Kiki Dee

#39. Why is it that English, drama and music teachers are most often recalled as our mentors and inspirations? Maybe because artists are rarely members of the popular crowd.

Roger Ebert

#40. Spanish and English have such different music, and in my own poetry I feel much less drawn to fluid sounds than I do toward the hard sounds and rhythms that come out of the Anglo-Saxon roots of English.

Joan Larkin

#41. I realised a long time ago that instrumental music speaks a lot more clearly than English, Spanish, Yiddish, Swahili, any other language. Pure melody goes outside time.

Carlos Santana

#42. You cannot sing African music in proper English

Fela Kuti

#43. Music came first and I started to jam with people I couldn't communicate in their language. Then, because I could make friends thanks to music, they started to talk to me. Then I started to learn English.

Hiromi

#44. I sang in English my whole life; I just happened to decide that I had a passion for Latin music, and I wanted to jump into Latin music first.

Prince Royce

#45. The more music you make, the better listener you become.

Graham English

#46. Say, has some wet bird-haunted English lawn Lent it the music of its trees at dawn?

Matthew Arnold

#47. I love vocal music, but I've had a hard time understanding myself through the English language. So it just seemed to me that if I relied solely on creating a voice out of the music, then I might be able to reach something more profound.

Arca

#48. Music was my life ... It was everything to me, even though I was in school majoring in English. I was still very focused on music and always finding ways to perform, so that was what set me up to want to become a recording artist.

John Legend

#49. The English were fascinated with the Italian people and their amazing Epicurean culture. Italian poetry, painting, pornography, music, drama, fashion, wine, women, cheese, anything Italiano was a premium commodity in London during Shakespeare's day.

Mark Lamonica

#50. I had found English audiences highly satisfactory. They are the best listeners in the world. Perhaps the music-lovers of some of our larger cities equal the English, but I do not believe they can be surpassed in that respect.

John Philip Sousa

#51. In the Belgian backwaters, south of Bruges, there lives a reclusive English composer, named Vyvyan Ayrs. You won't have heard of him because you're a musical oaf, but he's one of the greats.

David Mitchell

#52. I wasn't that bothered with school; I was too mad into horses. But I liked reading and was good enough at English and always liked music.

Kate Thompson

#53. We try to magnify the difference between Americans and the English. In real life they like the same music and dress the same. It's really much more similar than anyone thinks or how we show it.

Amanda Bynes

#54. There's not that much English folk music that is really that appealing.

Alison Goldfrapp

#55. It's not just the 'Grammys' that I've pulled out of. I also pulled out of the English awards as well. The reason that I wanted to pull out was because I believe very much that the music industry as a whole is mainly concerned with material success.

Alanis Morissette

#56. English is really free for me; there's no limits to the music and the imagination. And French, it's just I live in Paris, and it's really a poetic language where you can really play with words.

Yael Naim

#57. There are two sides of me, the bachata/tropical Latin side and the English pop as well. They're both equally important, so I'll always make sure to keep both roots in my music.

Prince Royce

#58. Irish folk is probably the biggest influence musically that I've ever had. My mother's Irish. And when I was very young, both my brothers were very into traditional music, English and Irish. They were always playing music, so I was always brought up with it.

Kate Bush

#59. Our sense of what American English is has upended our relationship to articulateness, our approach to writing, and how (and whether) we impart it to the young, our interest in poetry, and our conception of what it is, and even our response to music and how we judge it.

John McWhorter

#60. My tastes went all over the place, from Strauss to Mahler. I was never a big Wagner or Tchaikovsky fan. Benjamin Britten, Tallis, all the early English Medieval music, Prokofiev, some Russian composers, mostly the people that were the colorists, the French.

James Horner

#61. I quite like American music, like The Fray - I'm a massive fan of them - and The Killers. I also like more acoustic stuff like Ed Sheeran; I like this English songwriter James Morrison and another singer called Ben Howard.

Louis Tomlinson

#62. Out there in the spotlight you're a million miles away and every ounce of energy you try to give away as the sweat pours out your body like the music that you play.

Jon English

#63. When it is possible that people don't understand my English, I take my guitar and speak with my music!

Celedonio Romero

#64. I was wondering, do we get the best of Swedish music or just the best of Swedish music that speaks English? Sweden has a population of nine million. And with all these acts coming out it just seems like very ripe for musical success. I don't know how they do it.

Mike Pesca

#65. Strangely, the thing I listen to 75% of the time, when I'm exercising with my headphones on is English Tudor/Elizabethan music, so music from about 1450 to the early 1600's.

Tod Machover

#66. I remember, the first time I came to the United States in 1996, I didn't speak a word of English at the beginning. I am very thankful for this country and the opportunity music has given me ... My three kids were born here in Miami; they speak Spanish at home, but English with all their friends.

Juanes

#67. I've grown to love California: It's the dream of every English musician to come here and work in the sunshine. To walk up Sunset Boulevard, knowing you're going to make music - that's it.

Noel Gallagher

#68. It's as if Mom was expressing herself in a language other than English; a language that Grandma wouldn't be able to interpret simply by looking at the music notes.

Tessa Emily Hall

#69. English was jazz music, German was classical music, French was ecclesiastical music, and Spanish was the music from the streets.

Yann Martel

#70. I suppose, counting back, if the Beatles had been influenced by music in the same length of time ago - you'd have to put that into better English for me, thank you - they would have been like a banjo orchestra. They would have been doing show tunes.

Jonny Greenwood

#71. The second he took her into his arms, causing a sensation she couldn't quite describe in English as anything other than "mmmm", the music started.

Dee Tenorio

#72. I love English rock music the best and have always been fascinated by The Clash, especially Joe Strummer, their singer.

Carla Bruni

#73. The English may not like music, but they absolutely love the noise it makes.

Thomas Beecham

#74. I grew up speaking English and Spanish. I grew up moving from country to country due to political, governmental, and social issues and just family atmosphere that wasn't right to bring up your kid in a country where there's a dictatorship or a communist type sense, so I incorporate that int music.

Cristian Machado

#75. I pretty much spent my twenties as a musician and taking acting classes. I loved it. I was at UCLA getting As and Bs in English and creative writing, basically trying to stay out of the Army. All I really wanted to do was play music.

Robert David Hall

#76. I alone of English writers have consciously set myself to make music out of what I may call the sound of sense.

Robert Frost

#77. Ah, the bond between English boys and California girls. For those of us who aren't either, it's a bond that fascinates and mystifies. So much of the world's favorite music comes out of that relationship.

Rob Sheffield

#78. I started doing shows in places that I couldn't pronounce, didn't know existed, and I've seen people that didn't speak English or Spanish rapping to every lyric and singing to every hook. I said, "This is the type of music that I want to do."

Pitbull

#79. We dragged English guitar music out of the gutter.

Noel Gallagher